Embargo hurts
U.S. economy, Cubans
By John B. Quigley. Posted
on Sat, Mar. 06, 2004 in The
Miami Herald.
One afternoon in 1984, I was offered a
look through a telescope aimed at Miami.
I was in the multistory building in Havana
that President Dwight Eisenhower built as
a U.S. embassy. Eisenhower broke diplomatic
relations with Cuba in 1961, and the building
remained nearly empty.
To carry on communication with Cuba, while
officially not being in touch, the United
States was represented by Switzerland, with
U.S. officials working under Switzerland's
auspices as the ''U.S. Interests Section''
of the Swiss Embassy in Havana.
Similarly, Cuba arranged to be represented
through Czechoslovakia. In the Czech Embassy
in Washington, Cubans officials operated
as the "Cuban Interests Section.''
In Havana, the upshot of this elaborate
diplomatic pas de deux was that only one
floor of the tall building built by Eisenhower
was occupied. An upper floor, its window
allowed the telescope to see Florida on
a clear day.
We did have communication with Cuba, via
the ''interests'' sections. When President
Reagan sent troops into Grenada in 1983,
where a Cuban construction team was building
an airport, the communications were intense.
The United States needs to be dealing with
Cuba in a more comprehensive fashion. We
have been trying to bring down Cuba's government
for 40 years. Eisenhower set in motion a
military plan to overthrow Cuba's government.
But the plan, carried through by President
John Kennedy, failed, famously and disastrously,
at the Bay of Pigs. From that time, our
effort has been to bring Cuba down by economic
pressure, via a trade embargo.
That approach, too, has failed. We have
hurt Cuba economically. A small country,
it is more dependent on the United States
than we are on it. It needs the United States
as an export market.
At the same time, we have shot ourselves
in the foot because most other countries
trade with Cuba. We keep our own businesses
from doing so, and the void is filled by
others.
Our unsuccessful effort to isolate Cuba
causes ''collateral damage'' in our foreign
relations. Just now it is threatening our
relations with the hemisphere. To placate
Cuban-Americans who want a hard line toward
Cuba, President Bush appointed Roger Noriega,
an ex-aide to Sen. Jesse Helms, as assistant
secretary of state for Western Hemisphere
affairs.
Towing the hard line
Last month Noriega criticized Argentina's
new government for re-establishing full
diplomatic relations with Cuba. Fidel Castro
attended the inauguration in Buenos Aires
last spring of President Néstor Kirchner,
and Argentina's foreign minister visited
Cuba a few months later.
In a speech in January to the Council of
the Americas in New York, Noriega decried
what he called ''a certain leftward drift''
in Argentina's foreign policy.
Argentine officials reacted. A Cabinet
minister called Noriega's remarks ''those
of an insolent individual.'' Viewing Noriega
as interfering in Argentina's domestic affairs,
President Kirchner said, "We are a
country with dignity.''
Our hard line on Cuba puts us at odds with
regional actors such as Argentina whose
cooperation we need on a variety of issues.
Our posture also puts us at odds with our
European allies.
Europeans trade with Cuba. U.S. business
circles would like to do the same. The Cuban-American
community is divided on the embargo, as
many would like to see normalized relations,
in particular so that they could maintain
better contact with relatives in Cuba.
The argument for the embargo is that if
change is brought to Cuba, the Cuban people
will be better off. Yet for 40 years the
embargo has only made life harder on the
island. We are hurting the Cubans and ourselves.
John B. Quigley is a professor of law
at Ohio State University's Michael E. Moritz
College of Law.
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